I have never smoked before but I have always been concerned about the smoke e cigs cause. When some smokes one indoors or even out doors it just creates a massive plume of smoke and often you can taste in your mouth whatever flavor they are smoking.. are e cigs even worse for passive smoking? (I always hold my breathe when I am a near someone smoking whatever even if I look like a numpty doing it). If ecigs are just as bad should they have the same level of restrictions on them as normal cigs?

If ecigs are just as bad should they have the same level of restrictions on them as normal cigs?

Yes, but I don’t think that anybody has suggested that they are. If you worry about cancer, then I would be far more concerned with traffic pollution or UV exposure in day to day life than passive e-cig smoking.

I meant no conclusive evidence of harm, conclusions of studies are obviously keen to stress that long-term harm cannot be excluded, out of caution, but that they are many orders of magnitude safer than smoking.

Given that there are some 80,000 smoking-related deaths per year in the UK, a move to subject vaping to the same restrictions as smoking would be criminal . Those are lives to be potentially saved if every smoker switched to vaping.

They are undoubtably bad for you especially if they have nicotine in the “juice” which most do – they are after-all a form of nicotine replacement therapy. Inhaling steam is not normal and is bound to have some detrimental effect, but the level of harm is tiny. The harm is from Nicotine which is a poison – you can’t get away from this if you want to ingest nicotine in some form (which addicts do) the level of harm is likely similar to the level of harm from wearing a nicotine patch or chewing nicotine gum.

Overall the level of harm is massively smaller than actual smoking and as with real smoking, vaping effects are massively smaller on passive inhalers than active inhalers.

I sincerely expect traffic pollution to pose a higher risk (thats not to say its unpleasant)

As a smoker who swapped to vaping completely for a year and now gone back, the most irritating thing I found about vaping was the way people are evangelical about it, and doing things like deliberately being obnoxious as some kind of rebellion against sensible anti smoking legislation. A perfect example of this is the obsession with blowing big clouds – its done for looks not for delivery of nicotine.

If ecigs are just as bad should they have the same level of restrictions on them as normal cigs?

They’d have to try hard to be anywhere near as bad.

Mind you I do wonder about harm – although not enough to do any actual research into it – I don’t know how many of the vast range of flavouring molecules used have been tested for safety when inhaling in quantities relevant to vaping. The flavour molecules are normally restricted to food stuffs for eating. Clearly the lungs and the stomach are very different organs. Certainly when you walk past someone huffing down their nicotinated cherry vanilla steam it reeks far worse than any flavour laden yogurt etc.

Evidence is still a bit shaky cos they’ve only been around a few years, but if you’re inhaling nicotine there’s a good chance they will cause gum disease and make your teeth drop out jus’ like good ol tabaccy.

It’s a ticking time-bomb. Flavour ingredients are allowed to be used to give aroma (which is 95% of taste) to foods. These molecules are ingested and dealt with by the stomach or passed straight though but the flavour molecule diacetyl, which gives the butter flavour to popcorn, has already been found to cause lung damage in eight workers in a popcorn factory (Google Popcorn Lung).

That would have been eight people who didn’t deliberately inhale the molecule in a water vapour, which I imagine would increase absorption into lung tissue. So we have no idea what long-term damage is being caused by inhalation of flavour molecules.

@joey Diacetyl has been banned in e-cigarette juice flavorings in the UK for over 18 months now. The ‘ejuice’ industry has been booming recently and there’s an incentive for manufacturers to develop flavors with minimal additives as it appeals more to their customer base. I quit smoking through using an electronic cigarette and would say that even if there are health risks associated with vaping, they are immensely lower than those associated with actual smoking. It’s not been happening on a large enough scale for anyone to be able to accurately say what the long term health risks may be. I would be immensely surprised if it was anywhere close to as bad as actual smoking though!

If you look closely enough there are health risks associated with virtually everything these days – my view is that in order to live a life that you are actually able to enjoy you must accept an element of risk, whatever the extent of that risk may be.

I once was seconded to work for an international tobacco company whom had basically modelled the future market and concluded that the market for traditional tobacco in the western world would be dead in 5-10yrs and e-cigs would follow shortly once people got wind of the issues with them.

These people had more money than entire nations, the power to lobby governments and officials with the greatest of ease, and their attitude and mindset made bond villains look like part timers. I concluded that their lack of investment in e-cig’s was based on sound science and market predictions.

Ultimately they picked a third way which was to invent a cigarette system which had no ‘biomarkers of harm or risk’ (cancer causing stuff), but had the same taste, smell, smoke and ‘ritual’ (the sales hook). When I left the programme they had successfully completed human clinical trials across Europe, US and Japan so I would imagine this device is now almost ready for market.

@timo Nicotine on its own does have a long list of adverse events and despite rigorous research the issues are still not well understood. It’s the addiction and dependency that go hand in hand with all the cancer causing components that makes it nastier still.

@timo nicotine most certainly is a poison, it does however have a use that it stimulates the dopamine pathways in the brain when administered in small doses. The administration device can be a cigarette or a vape (or gum/lozenge/spray etc) cigarettes are deadly as we know, vapes less so, early tests have indicated. we won’t know the long term until, well, a long term has passed. Would there be any genetic problems passed on to 3rd or 4th generation children of vapers for example?

My mate went on a business exchange to China. Whilst over there he toured a factory that makes the vape flavour thingies.

He spoke to some of the workers on their break, who were all smoking traditional cigs. He asked them why they weren’t smoking e cigs. The workers all burst out laughing before one said ”’know what’s in that stuff”.

Had I continued smoking them, fags would probably have shortened my life by about ten years as I had smoked them for about thirty years.

Two and a half years ago I exchanged them for an e cig. I’m still a nicotine addict but I can feel the difference in the delivery method every day in my lack of cough, higher fitness, skin condition, dental health and so on.

Nicotine is highly addictive but probably only mildly harmful.

Vaping will improve the lives and extend the lives of millions of people who would otherwise be unable to stop smoking because they can’t overcome the addiction.

@frosty I agree e cigs sounds like a great alternative for smokers wanting to quit smoking. But what about young people who have never smoked before and see vaping as a trendy thing and get an addiction because of the trend?

I agree e cigs sounds a like a great alternative for smokers wanting to quit smoking. But what about young people who have never smoked before and see vaping as a trendy thing and get an addiction because of the trend?

From what I’ve read, the nicotine and flavouring additives are thought to be relatively safe. But when the liquid is heated to produce vapour, the additives burn and produce a whole lot of organic combustion products the health effects of which are almost completely unknown.

@nick You should read the published meta-data analysis for nicotine which says contrary to it being harmless. They do stop short of citing it as carcinogenic but do report evidence to support its role with mechanisms of causing cancer, other papers report differently and have proposed both animal and human clinical data for its role in various cancers.

Regarding nicotine’s safety profile compared with tea/coffee that would be interesting. Tea and coffees image as being healthy has been touted for a long time, not long ago Victorian doctors were saying the same about tobacco.

Hmm. have never been a smoker (can’t stand the stench) but their “must” be something in it that attracts so many people, wondering whether any non smoker has tried / taken up e cigarettes and their thoughts on it? I assume it is just as addictive as smoking but considered relatively safe

Hmm. have never been a smoker (can’t stand the stench) but their “must” be something in it that attracts so many people, wondering whether any non smoker has tried / taken up e cigarettes and their thoughts on it? I assume it is just as addictive as smoking but considered relatively safe

@freddy Whatever reason that people start smoking (never a sensible decision – I can’t even remember when I did but it was probably in a smoky pub somewhere with smoking mates and too many beers) it’s the nicotine that keeps you at it. Your last sentence is correct.

I would strongly discourage anyone from going anywhere near an e-cig unless they were a smoker wanting to give up – who needs an extra addiction/cost in their lives. Though unless you go all nerdy on it e-cigs and liquids are much cheaper than keeping up a smoking habit.

I imagine there is no definitive answer due to lack of information as to the full ingredients of the liquid as general knowledge( i don’t now whats in them, or how or if the additives are controlled/regulated/tested etc.)

One of the issues with traditional cigarettes (this is aside from the obvious inhaling red hot smoke into lung tissue) are the chemicals added by the manufacturer to aid in the delivery of the nicotine as fast as possible to the receptors in the brain, which is the main cause of the intense ‘hit’ and the subsequent difficulty in stopping smoking.

I suspect they are less damaging than fags, but if the same cocktail of additives are used, maybe not much so.

@andrewsb Good news. They don’t add any of those things because they don’t need too. No need for it as they don’t need help to burn like tobacco does. No burning involved. You can speculate all you like about what’s in them but in general almost everything used has been proven safe. They’ve been pretty good at self regulating so far.

Vaping is 95% safer than smoking and doesn’t get kids hooked, claims Public Health England